Best 1000 Dollar Gaming PC in 2020 (Console Killer)

The time has come, we’re rolling out the big guns! In this guide we’re going to take a look at the best gaming pc build under 1000 dollars.

We tried our best to give you the best bang-for-your-buck with $1000 in your pocket and our builds today are sure to give you an amazing gaming (or otherwise) experience for the price.

If you’re spending this much on a gaming PC, it’ll last a long time as long as you can turn some settings down eventually.

Let’s dive in:

Prebuilt Choice: iBuyPower Element 9260 Gaming Desktop

It always begins with the pre-built option, and we found a pretty damn good one at that.

Comparing our pre-built to the custom build options it doesn’t win any awards, but it sure does provide a great experience regardless.

Packing 8 cores in its CPU, it should do better in compute and workstation tasks but its GPU definitely falls behind.

Specs:

Intel Core i7-9700F

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

16GB DDR4 RAM

iBuyPower’s Element 9260 Gaming Desktop hits all the marks for an out-of-the-box gaming experience in providing not just high-end internal components, but also including a mouse and keyboard set, all for under 1000 dollars.

Its 1TB 7200RPM hard drive ensures you’ll have enough space for your entire Steam, Origin, or EpicGames libraries, and the speed of its 240GB SSD allows for speedy boot times.

And along with that keyboard and mouse that we mentioned, it also comes pre-installed with a full copy of Windows 10 — the included features don’t end there though.

This $1000 prebuilt gaming PC also includes a Wi-Fi card in case you don’t have readily accessible Ethernet, and you get a 1-Year Parts & Labor warranty with free lifetime tech support.

Best 1000 Dollar Gaming PC Build

When it comes to gaming, this puppy can power through literally anything; except maybe Crisis max settings.

Just kidding.

Seriously though, the sheer firepower you’ll be wielding in this thing is enough to blaze through any triple-A title at 1080p 60fps no problem.

Even 1440p should have no problems here, and you can even go 4K at a playable framerate.

Not to mention the fact that your RTX 2060 Super has that whole ray-tracing thingy that, you know, makes your games look freakin’ amazing.

Even with ray-tracing on, unlike the regular RTX 2060, you should be able to play your games at pretty high settings too.

CPU: Intel Core i5-9600KF

You can’t really beat Intel’s Core i5-9600KF at most mid to high-range pricepoints since the price gaps between Intel processors are so large, but it’s still suitable for all of your gaming needs.

Sporting 6 cores without hyperthreading, you might think it wouldn’t perform too well against the Ryzen 5 3600X’s 6 cores and 12 threads, but you’d be horribly wrong. With a baseline performance almost equalling the 3600X and superb overclocked performance to boot, you’d be hard-pressed to find a CPU that provides this much for the price.

The only real downsides to the 9600KF are the lack of integrated graphics for one (but that doesn’t matter too much with our dedicated graphics card) and the fact that you need an expensive Z390 board to get any overclocking out of the chip.

CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 Black Edition

The most popular CPU cooler on the market right now is the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, but we much more prefer the sleek darkness of the Hyper 212 Black Edition for just $5USD extra.

The power of the Hyper 212 series is comparable to that of lower-end water coolers for pretty much half the price, so there’s no reason not to go for it unless you really need to flex the fact that your processor is water-cooled.

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 UD

Leave it to Intel to send in for the cheap overclocking boards, and leave it to Gigabyte to give us the Z390 UD.

This board really saved our behinds with its low price.

Don’t let that fool you, however, because it ain’t lacking in any areas.

Since we had to worry about a CPU cooler for the Intel build, the reduced price of this overclock-capable board really helps it out, giving it a supreme edge in gaming and elsewhere.

Its internal and rear IO doesn’t hold back in the slightest, allowing you to plug in up to 6 slots worth of expansion cards, an M.2 SSD, and a ton of SATA storage if need be. Plus, as we mentioned already, the overclocking will boost your performance greatly.

We should also mention that this board has an extra 4-pin ATX power port at the top alongside the normal CPU power ports.

It is not required that this port be powered, and our chosen power supply doesn’t have the extra connector anyway.

This port is for extreme overclocking and we don’t suggest you spend the money to use it unless you have an insanely powerful CPU like an Intel i9.

This thing is a full-sized ATX board, meaning it won’t fit in a micro-ATX case. If you want a smaller PC, just sub out the motherboard for a micro-ATX board with the same socket type and chipset.

Graphics: Zotac GeForce RTX 2060 Super Mini

We had plans to suggest the regular RTX 2060 for this build but considering our $900 build guide already used it, we knew we had to upgrade. Thankfully, the RTX 2060 Super provides RTX 2070-like performance for a much lower price — it’s amazing.

Thanks to this thing’s high GPU memory clock speed, you can play all your favorite games at 1080p or even 1440p at 60fps for sure, maybe even some sick 4K gaming.

Additionally, unlike the baseline RTX 2060, you can run this puppy with ray-tracing on with no worries!

Case: Rosewill Prism S Lite

The Rosewill Prism S Lite offers a clean look and a sexy tempered glass side panel all at a great price.

Including 2 120mm case fans pre-installed, it harbors support for up to 6 and up to a 240mm water cooling radiator on the front of the case, 360mm radiator on the bottom, or a maximum of 160mm tall CPU cooler.

Its top-mounted power supply shroud makes it so that cool air can be pulled right into the power supply for optimal cooling, and it offers some extra cable management room as well.

Performance Benchmarks

Welcome to the benchmark section of the guide where we either prove your hypothesis or crush your dreams in a matter of minutes.

Now check out those performance numbers!

Gaming Benchmark

Holy crap! The gaming benchmarks left us freakin’ speechless.

We did not expect AMD’s side to take the cake in the slightest, and these numbers are honestly crazy. AMD’s side wins in not only 1, 2, or 3 benchmarks but 4 out of 5 games we had for testing, geez.

Imagine what the i5-9600KF could do paired with an RX 5700 XT…

CPU Speed Benchmark

There isn’t really anything to note in regard to our baseline CPU benchmark. Intel wins in single-core and AMD wins in multi-core as always.

However, once we switch gears to our overclocked benchmark something pretty interesting happens.

Intel continues to widen the gap between AMD when it comes to single-core performance, but it looks like they’re getting the hang of multi-core as well seeing that the i5-9600KF not only catches up to the 3600X but surpasses it, if even by only a small margin.

Read/Write Hard Drive Benchmark

On our drive speed benchmark, we compared our Seagate drive to Western Digital’s closest offering (which costs over $100USD). It holds its own for sure in the regular read/write benchmark, especially when you consider the price difference.

As for the SSDs, the 128GB Ace A55 surprisingly outperforms its 240GB PNY competitor in the baseline tests.

For 4K read/writes everything changes quite a bit.

Looking at the hard drives, the WD Black 2TB beats out our Seagate drive by miles, and we sort of expected it anyways. On the SSD side, the CS900 retakes its throne with a marginal performance gap between itself and the Ace A55.